


Restoration

by MorningSun



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Emotional Baggage, F/M, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Stolen Moments, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-22
Updated: 2016-07-22
Packaged: 2018-07-26 00:52:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7553872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MorningSun/pseuds/MorningSun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After all of their friends leave Star City, Oliver and Felicity remain behind to repair the Arrow lair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Restoration

**Author's Note:**

> Aren't we all wondering what these two did after the Season 4 Finale? I decided to write down some of the ideas I had floating around in my head.
> 
> I took a little artistic liberty and destroyed the lair a bit more than we saw in canon, so that Oliver and Felicity would have to spend a good amount of time repairing it.   
> These are a few moments of their time together :)

* * *

 

The day after everyone left, Felicity came to the lair to find Oliver sitting on a piece of what had once been a wall. It was weird without John or Thea here. Just the two of them.  
There was nowhere to hide. It was just him, her and their immense emotional baggage, which weighed down the air between them.

“How about we make a trip to the nearest department store?”

***  
Oliver was doing the heavy lifting, removing broken fragments of walls, glass, computers, shelves. Felicity was scrutinising a blueprint of the lair. It was a perfect excuse for both of them not to talk.  
The space between them felt almost electrified from all the quiet tension. They had already spent a couple of days like this and Felicity wasn’t sure she could take much longer.

***  
Since actual speaking was still off-bounds, Felicity brought a radio to their little construction site to fill the silence.

***  
“Finally!” Felicity sighed and sank down to the floor after finishing her last task of the day. “I feel like a worm.”  
Oliver sat next to her with a huge water bottle and they spent the next five minutes trying to rehydrate.

“It is really too bad we can’t hire a construction group to help us out here.”

“On the bright side,” Oliver looked quite cheery, “we have take-out Chinese.”  
Felicity moaned and closed her eyes. She felt depleted. It might have been a full day since her last meal. At least it seemed so.  
Oliver handed her one of the white boxes.  
Felicity opened it and was close to climaxing from the smell alone. It was amazing. Spicy, rich with a tinge of lemon. She took a bite and moaned again.  
Oliver ate quietly, but seemed rather amused by the sounds she was making.

“Who are you to eat this godlike food with a straight face?” Felicity bumped him with her elbow. The action took so much effort, she thought she might take a nap afterwards. Oliver laughed.

“I might have to live another five years not to flinch whenever I smell Chinese food.”

“What was it? A bad childhood trauma?” Felicity asked.  
Oliver didn’t laugh and suddenly she realised it wasn’t just a silly memory. This food somehow reminded him of the time he spent in China, fighting for his life.

“Tell me?” Felicity said almost inaudibly. She readied herself for another rejection, which usually followed whenever she tried to make Oliver open up about his past. This time he didn’t.

***

“Where is the…?” Oliver lifted the curtain, froze and let go of the wrench he was holding, sending it crashing to the floor. The reason for this accident was scurrying around, feverishly trying to put on a fresh t-shirt.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to,” Oliver backed out and started apologising.

“It’s ok. I just had to put on clean clothes in order to save my sanity after falling asleep here yesterday, or you could say it was an early today. Anyway, no worries. Nothing you haven’t seen before,” Felicity sighed.

“God, I should stop speaking already.”

She turned to face him, face flushed with embarrassment. Their eyes locked for a split second before they both looked away. The need in Oliver’s eyes was palpable. She almost couldn’t breathe for a moment, her own blood heating up furiously.  
Oliver picked up the wrench and Felicity started fiddling with one of her computers. Anything to keep them from ripping each other’s clothes off.

“We should do something about that wall.” Felicity pointed in random direction. “Paint it or something, otherwise it looks a bit depressing.”  
  
***

“I’m glad.” Oliver smiled, even though the person on the other end of the line couldn’t see him. “Stay safe. Bye.”  
He paused for a second, his face lit up with fondness for the caller. Which was sort of none of Felicity’s business, since their relationship was now strictly platonic and she wasn’t really allowed to even think about it too much, because then all these good memories started flooding her mind and she couldn’t focus on the task, which was rebuilding the lair. With Oliver. Her friend.

He lifted his eyes and caught her staring at him from behind the ladder, a paintbrush in her hand, caught in a movement in the middle of the air, where she had reached for the wall before getting distracted by his face once again.  
They both quickly looked away and Felicity had to squeeze her eyes shut to get over the jolt of awkwardness.

“Umm…that was Thea.” Oliver tried to feign normal tone in their two men show Platonic Construction Workers.   
Felicity was nevertheless grateful for the change of topic.

“Oh, how is she?”  
Oliver resumed his place next to her and picked up his paintbrush from the box of instruments on his right.

“Good. She sounds happy.”  
There was the looking in the distance with hope look again. After weeks of picking up the pieces of their city and themselves, Felicity was relieved to see Oliver beginning to relax and not relive every mistake he could have avoided during the Darhk times.

“So do you.” Felicity blurted out before thinking it through. She stopped abruptly and was suddenly fiercely determined not to miss a single spot on her side of the wall with her brush. Oliver chuckled.  
Her head snapped at him.

“What?”  
Oliver slowly put his brush down. Uh oh, that was bad. That was not a good move. Felicity tried to shield her face with her brush.  
Oliver opened his mouth to say something and she knew what it was going to be and her treacherous heart skipped a beat as always, but this time Felicity was determined to nail this platonic friends thing (ok, maybe not her best choice of words, but the idea was clear), so she shushed him by putting her paintbrush to his lips. Her paintbrush, which she had just used to paint the wall. The paintbrush with dark green paint on it. The same paint, which was now on Oliver’s face.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry!” She exclaimed and started feverishly searching her surroundings for a box of tissues or a clean cloth.  
Then something cold and wet touched her cheek. Felicity looked back. Oliver had poked her with his brush.

“No you didn’t…” She looked at his perfectly innocent expression. Bright eyes, wide smile, eyebrows slightly raised. She knew her eyes lingered just a second too long, but that was far from unusual between them lately. She abandoned her quest for cleansing and lurched forward with her paintbrush. Which was hopeless, because he was the Green Arrow and ex Ra’s Al Ghul, which meant unbelievable reaction speed and excellent combat skills. Oliver ducked to the side and struck back.  
Felicity stepped backwards. 

They started something that vaguely resembled a sword fight.  
Felicity took one more step back.  
Oliver’s eyes flashed to the ground and she saw his eyes widen, but it was already too late, she bumped against the big bucket of paint and fell over, sending a wave of dark green across the floor.

“Are you alright?” Oliver knelt at her side and helped her get back to vertical position. Felicity looked at him and even though he was trying his hardest to look concerned, there was a laugh fighting its way out of him.

***

“Our new place has these giant windows, almost like the ones you have in your loft, except less…monumental, which is great, because Paul really loves to watch the sun set in the evenings, which is totally romantic, and…completely irrelevant.” Curtis was following Felicity into what had once been the Arrow lair and now was a construction site.

“Uh, Felicity, I have one more question: why is there a giant green splotch on the floor?”  
Felicity drew her palms into fists to get through yet another wave of embarrassment. She was glad Curtis couldn’t see her face.

“No reason. Just an accident.”  
Felicity turned to him and smiled. Curtis gave her a weird look.

“Hey, Curtis!” Oliver emerged from behind a curtain holding a bundle of wires, which looked far too heavy to be carried around with such ease. Felicity got distracted by the way Oliver’s arms muscles flexed for just the teeniest moment. He was wearing the same grey t-shirt he had been wearing for the past week. It was covered in paint, oil and dust, and…inexplicably it turned her on. She took a deep breath and turned her attention back to Curtis.   
He waited until Oliver went to the other side of the lair and started working on the distribution board, then stepped closer to Felicity.

“Are you two bac…”

“No!” Felicity interrupted him mid sentence. “We are friends.”  
Curtis looked at both of them again, not quite so sure.

“Just friends.” Felicity looked at him pointedly.

***

“Ok, so I’m going to count to three and switch it on.” Oliver told her and put his fingers on the little plastic switch.

“One…two…three.” He flipped it and they both instinctively shielded their heads with their hands from the possible explosion. Surprisingly, it didn’t come.  
Their eyes locked in a moment of pure shock.

“It works!” Felicity announced.

“I honestly cannot believe it.” Oliver chuckled.

“Oh, c’mon! Have a little faith in yourself.” Felicity ran over to him from the island in the middle of the lair. She almost lunged to hug him, but stopped at the last second. Instead she gave him a high five.

“Yeah! That’s what I’m talking about. Teamwork!”  
They basked in the glory of a working electrical circuit after what had to have been a thousand failed attempts. Smiling, looking into each other’s eyes. When the joy over their shared achievement subsided, Felicity noticed that Oliver was staring. Again. He had stopped laughing and was now smiling faintly, but so lovingly it made her heart shrink. He had caught her off-guard. Her smile vanished and she took a step back.

“Don’t do that. We talked about this.” Felicity lifted her eyes with just a tinge of sadness in them.  
Oliver quickly realised what he’d been doing and turned his gaze away.

“Sorry, it just…”

“Feels just like it used to?”  
Their eyes locked and it was almost too much to take.

“Yeah.”

“I’m sure we’re just suffering from a lack of oxygen. All this paint and all.” Felicity knew for sure it had nothing to do with paint or lack of fresh air. But she couldn’t fall back into old patterns. She had to be smarter this time around.

“Felicity.”

“Don’t say my name like that.”

“Like what?”  
She looked at him pointedly. Like there is no other name in the universe.

“Like I still love you and I’m never going to stop hoping that one day I will have redeemed myself enough for you to trust me again? Because then there is nothing I can do about the way I say your name.”  
Felicity couldn’t move from the ache in her chest, begging her to step closer to him, comfort him; her love for him was tearing her apart, but he was right, she wasn’t certain yet. She desperately wanted to be, but she wasn’t. So Felicity didn’t move until a part of his words caught her attention.

“What do you mean until you redeem yourself?”  
She looked at him. Oliver avoided her eyes.

“I failed you. I lost your trust when you were nothing but supportive and honest, and kind to me. I just wasn’t good enough. For you, for this city. And I feel I need to make it up to you. For everything we’ve lost.”  
Felicity started to shake her head and seemed unable to stop.

“How many times are we going to have this conversation, Oliver? It wasn’t your fault that Darhk chose Star city to create the eight circle of hell! I know you lost a lot.”  
Oliver looked at her with reserve, not quite believing her words.

“But so did everyone, so did I. You were never going to save every single citizen in the world. And that might be hard to accept, but you’ve got to trust people enough to let them fight for themselves, let them defend themselves.”

“I’ve seen so many people torn away from me that I can’t stand watching anyone else go. I have so little left to lose. I don’t think I can take chances.” 

“Yes, you can! And you have to!”  
She took Oliver’s face between her hands and jolted almost unnoticeably at the touch. He sighed.

“Trust people. Trust them with their lives. I’m not saying that it is not a risk, but it is one worth taking.”  
Felicity smiled encouragingly.

“Teamwork, remember?”  
Maybe it was the fact that they were standing in the middle of a broken home that made it easier for Oliver to hide his own wreckage, but now Felicity could see it clearly enough. It was similar to the scars in her heart, but much deeper, much more dangerous, as Oliver was known to spiral into a dark place in his soul whenever his pain was too much for him to take. Felicity realised then just how good of a decision it had been to stay here with him. The lair wasn’t the only thing that needed to be repaired.

***  
It was the end of yet another tedious day and Oliver and Felicity collapsed on the cushions near the wall, which had long since become their spot.

“Do I still have legs?” Felicity said jokingly, looking at her exhausted body.  
Oliver looked at her with concern.

“Is everything alright? If this is too much for you, I can take half of your work tomorrow. You can’t risk with…”

“The magic that is helping me walk?” Felicity supplemented. “No, I’m perfectly fine. Besides, if you started doing even more than you already are, I’d feel useless.”

“That’s impossible.” Oliver looked at the ground.

“Yesterday you fixed up all of the walls while I set up one computer. One.”

“Well, I couldn’t have done that. I don’t think I could have done any of this,” he gestured at the half finished lair, “without you. You’re the only constant in my life right now.”  
This realisation hit them both equally hard. There was nothing to say. Three words more and they would have said too much. So Felicity didn’t say anything. She slid her hand down to meet his and clasped it. Holding his hand had always made her feel stronger, even though hers was much smaller and weaker. When Oliver held her hand, she never thought of how he could crush it with minimal effort, how fragile it had to feel in his. Instead she thought about how she could rely on him, how he would always be strong enough to catch her if she fell, protect her if she needed to be protected. Holding his hand was certainty.   
Felicity’s breath caught in her chest softly as she realised it. Certainty. It was still there to be found, they hadn’t lost it completely, it was just hidden behind everything they still couldn’t say to each other.

“Do you remember how when you were little all it took to feel grounded and safe was a mother’s kiss on the forehead.?” Felicity half whispered. She put her head on his shoulder and rested his cheek against it.

They talked about their childhood and parents. Oliver finally spoke about his loss and how there was still a part of him that blamed himself in his parent’s deaths. Felicity told him all about her rebellious teenage years and why she gave up her goth phase, Oliver (visibly embarrassed) told her how he ended up being city’s biggest playboy. He remembered Tommy and everything he never got to say to him, every mistake he never got the chance to fix. They both confessed they had been lost for the better part of their lives. Not sure if they could ever feel steady, not sure if they deserved to.  
They never let go of each other’s hand.

***  
Felicity was sitting in her new desk chair and spinning around. It had been so long since she last got to do that, it gave her a sense of thrill.  
Oliver watched her from the side and smiled to himself. She was wearing a Palmer Tech t-shirt and dark grey sweatpants. No one had ever looked more beautiful. He almost left her to go finish plumbing, when his eyes focused on something odd.

“What’s that?” he furrowed his brows upon identifying a small Green Arrow figurine sitting on the desk next to one of Felicity’s computers. She smiled and turned in her chair, her ponytail bouncing with the movement.

“That’s you!” she offered enthusiastically. Oliver smiled fondly.

“I found it in a little shop just a couple of blocks away. You were on sale.”  
This time Oliver laughed.

***

“Felicity?” Oliver called, returning from a last-minute meeting in his mayoral office. He heard strange, muffled sounds coming from somewhere in the lair and he immediately started looking for her. It felt as if someone had gripped his heart in a fist.

“Felicity?”  
He found her on the floor next to where his suit hanged illuminated. She was crouched on the floor, hugging her knees.

“Hey, what happened, are you alright?” he sat down next to her and took her cheek in his hand. It near killed him to see her like this.

“I was installing the light for your new suit closet and I thought about,” her voice broke, “whether we should put up John’s and then I wondered where I should put Laurel’s. I forgot for a second. And then it all came rushing back. We don’t need to put up a closet for her suit, because there is no more Black Canary, no suit, no Laurel. She’s really gone.”

Felicity drew breath violently and pulled her legs closer to her chest. Oliver hadn’t expected to be reminded of that particular scar on his heart. It hadn’t healed. It still pulsated every time he stumbled upon something that reminded him of Laurel. A song, a book, a place on the street. He had learned to live with it. He learned to change focus just like he had had to so many times before. Change focus whenever the memory became too vivid, think about something else, anything else. He could deal with the little reminders, but no one could prepare for the big ones, like this.  
Oliver felt the loss of Laurel still, but now he could only focus on Felicity, who was shaking right here in front of him. He reached around her and pulled her in his lap, locking her inside an embrace, her head against his chest. Just what Laurel would have done. Supporting her friend even if she was hurting too, always being the wise one.  
Felicity’s tears sank into his shirt as he held her as tight as he could without breaking her.

“I can’t believe she will never walk in here again.” She managed to squeeze out. “I don’t know how I lived so long without realising that she never would.”

“That’s ok. We all deal with loss in our own ways.”

“No!” she said fiercely, “it’s not ok. I forgot! How could I forget?”

“You didn’t. You just didn’t let the pain take over you, so that you could push through it.”

“I forgot.”

“That’s fine, Felicity.” Oliver put his lips to her temple and closed his eyes.

“How can we forget something so important? How?! As much I promise myself not to take something for granted, I fail each time. I forget and it breaks me again and again.”  
Oliver kissed her hair. He wasn’t sure how to remember that they were still just friends. He wasn’t sure how not to forget that when they had spent the last month together, being each other’s rocks. He didn’t know how to tell her that he would never take her for granted again. But what if she was right?  
What if they really couldn’t force themselves to remember and he’d forget again, what if years from now when the pain would have worn off, he’d hurt her again? He wanted to say that he would never. But that was what he always said. I’d never forget. Whereas in reality certainty was an illusion. All they ever had was now.

“Oliver?” she barely whispered.

“Yes?”

“I love you.” She told him and he held his breath for a moment, scared to shatter the moment. “Just know that.”  
He hadn’t realised he needed the confirmation. 

“I love you too, Felicity. More than you know.”

“I know.”

***  
Oliver put the generator down and sighed. Felicity patted him on the arm and proceeded to set it up.  
Oliver was wearing his grey shirt again. And he smelt like a day’s worth of menial work, dried paint, cement and burnt wire. Something that should have sent Felicity running, but for some reason was driving her nuts.  
It was becoming extremely hard to concentrate on connecting the right wires. Finally she stood up and faced him.

Bad idea. He was staring right back at her. The awkwardness had resurfaced. This time because they were certain, they had talked almost every night, they had argued and discussed anything that had bothered either one of them, there had hardly been a day since everyone left, which they hadn’t spent together. By now the tension was unbelievable. Yet neither of them wanted to be the first to mention its presence.

“I’m almost finished with the generator. And that is the last task on our list.”  
Yes, she had made a list.

“And you should take off that shirt.” Felicity added and froze. “I mean it’s very dirty.”  
Like her mind.

***  
After the third time she had been referred to as Mrs. Queen, Felicity pulled Oliver aside. She kept a polite smile on her face in case a sneaky drama-hungry photographer was to jump out from underneath the white clothed tables.

“Do people still think we are married?” she asked him. Oliver avoided her gaze.

“Oliver?”

“Possibly.”

“I knew attending all these mayoral events was only going to complicate things.”  
Balls, fund-raisers and Sunday lunches had been their new pastime activity for the past two months since they finished working on repairing the lair. Quite frankly, it was a good excuse to spend time together and it involved free drinks. Oliver was happy to see at least one familiar face amongst all the businesspeople; Felicity enjoyed wearing her evening dresses and watching Oliver’s reactions. It served as a much-needed break from all the work she’d been doing to win back her position at Palmer Tech.

***

“What do you think?” Felicity turned to Oliver after finishing her speech. He was half standing, half sitting on the table. She stepped in front of him to examine his response.

“I think...” Oliver smiled at the dead serious expression on Felicity’s face.

“That it needs more you in it.”  
Felicity’s shoulders sagged.

“I’m not sure I’m ready for the meeting tomorrow.”

“Felicity Smoak, if I was ready to speak at all those publicity events last week, you are ready to go to that board meeting and get back to where you belong.”

***  
Felicity stood in the conference room, surrounded by the Palmer Tech board, which didn’t look too enthused by her presence.

“I know that we didn’t part on the best of terms.” She began, searching the impassive faces of the people at the table.

“You accused me of always putting something else in front of this company…and you were right.” She earned a few arrogant smirks.

“I put myself first. During those few months I lost so much. And I guess I couldn’t cope with all of it. We all lost something, someone…. to hell, we almost lost our city, our world. But we survived. I survived. And I realised I was that much stronger than I ever knew. I understood just how far I was willing to go to survive and I know I can help this company succeed. Today I’m asking you to give me a chance to redeem myself. I’m here to take back my rightful spot here in Palmer Tech.”

***  
Without thinking much about the possible consequences, Felicity walked out of that conference room straight into Oliver’s embrace.

“They need to deliberate.” She said, relaxing at his touch.

“I’m sure they will vote in favour of you.”  
Felicity was almost certain too.   
She pulled back a little and there they were, too close for platonic friends. Felicity deliberated a question of her own and finally stepped back completely. Not the right timing. Oliver almost contained his disappointment, it only showed in the corners of his lips.

***  
The loft was experiencing one of the weekly movie nights. It wasn’t clear who picked a horror movie, but Felicity had to platonically curl against Oliver’s side just to be able to keep her eyes open.

“I love you.” Oliver declared out of the blue and Felicity sat up straight to see him properly.

“This is not the time for this conversation.”

“I’m a bit tired of waiting for the right time. When is it ever going to be right?”

“I’m sure it will.”

“Felicity, we broke up because neither of us was completely honest with the other. We let our inner demons mess with our heads, but that isn’t true anymore.”  
Felicity considered reaching for popcorn so she wouldn’t have to speak.

“It took us a long time to get here, but we are here. I’ve bared my soul to you and so have you, and the best part is that it no longer feels scary. It is a relief.”  
Felicity heard Oliver’s version of her own words bouncing back at her and finally met his eyes.

“I don’t want to keep pretending that I don’t want to kiss you every time I see you.”  
The tension was unbearable. Felicity had to say something otherwise they both would suffocate. The problem was. She had no words left.

“Then don’t.”  
Before the words had left her lips, Felicity was met with Oliver’s kiss. It felt like the end of the world. Like something was exploding. Her entire body was tingling with joy and excitement. Maybe this was the right moment.   
Felicity had been scared that she would still feel weary about their past mistakes, but she didn’t. They had said everything that could be said. Now it was time to relearn.


End file.
